Alan Tam accused of violating social distancing rules

Hong Kong — Alan Tam was in deep trouble after he was accused of breaching social distancing restrictions during his recent hiking trip with friends.

He went hiking with Michael Miu and Margie Tsang when gatherings of more than two people are not allowed in Hong Kong. The 70-year-old went on a sharing spree on Wednesday (January 20) uploading several shots from his morning hike on Weibo.

He captioned the photos, saying that there was a batch of photos from that morning that was “not so satisfactory but very raw.” Tam is spotted posing with actor Michael Miu with the Ting Kau Bridge in the background, based on a report by 8days.sg on January 22. In the evening, Tam posted another collection of photos, this time with former actress Margie Tsang, followed by a third batch that had him, Miu and another guy whom Tam referred to as B Zai.

Tam mentioned in his caption that he bumped into B Zai on his way back but reporters noticed that Tam was wearing the same outfit in all the photos. That means that Tam had breached social distancing restrictions since gatherings of more than two people are not allowed in Hong Kong now. They also pointed out that no one was wearing a mask in any of the photos.

Since then, the third collection of photos have been removed. It could be that it was a coincidence that Tam had bumped into B Zai but a scroll through his Weibo account showed that the four clearly violated safe distancing guidelines when they went hiking together a day earlier.

As Hong Kong goes through its fourth wave of infections, strict social distancing guidelines have been put in place. Based on the latest restrictions, groups of more than two are not allowed to gather in public. Wearing a face mask is also still mandatory in public settings. Anyone caught participating in a prohibited group gathering may be fined HK$5,000 (SGD855).